The Road to Online Training Success Is Paved With Preparation
Trainers and training departments are embracing a viable, cost-saving option to deliver programs online using synchronous (at the same time) software tools. Bravo! Online software tools have come a long way in the last five years and, with increased bandwidth and improved hardware, trainers are able to engage with learners—and learners with one another—without leaving their offices.
But, frighteningly, as more organizations adopt online training, more trainers find themselves on a high wire without a net. more...
Has your company been throwing its after-sale support staff to the lions?
Think about it: Do your after-sale people have all the resources – particularly training – that they need to ensure that the customer is delighted with your product? Are you measuring how well your customer’s employees have learned to use your technology? Have your after-sale support people made themselves available and invaluable to your customer’s people? Do they know precisely how to serve your customers?
If these questions have you squirming, you’re not alone. Like most companies, you probably hire good technical people, and you count on them to do whatever it takes to make your customers happy. more...
You’ve been there before, in an airport waiting for a flight, or in a restaurant waiting for a friend. You feel awkward and don’t know what to look at, so you scramble for something to read or engage a stranger in small talk – anything to stave off the boredom.
In the classroom, waiting can be even more challenging. As a trainer, you wonder if you should wait for tardy students. When you ask a question and no one answers, how long should you wait for a response? You may think that for every second you don’t speak, students are losing interest -- so you answer your own questions. But think about what message impatience delivers. Remember leaving a restaurant and missing your sheepish, late friend by just seconds? What message did you send? Asking great questions and waiting for participants to respond is the single most effective way to build interaction. more...
How ironic! It surprised me to read that now even training companies are putting a freeze on training for internal staff. What message does that send to clients and prospects? That the argument long cited by balky clients -that training is dispensable - is valid after all?
Suspending training expenditures is a common belt-tightening strategy, often undertaken to minimize the need for layoffs. It's easy to understand why employers prefer freezing training budgets to reducing headcount, because it appears painless.
But what happens inside a company when formal training is scrapped? more...
 |
 |